Gullberg, Olof - Selected Piano Music - Höjer, Olof

Olof Gullberg was born in Varberg in 1931. He studied Counterpoint and Composition with Hilding Rosenberg and Karl-Birger Blomdahl, piano with Herbert Westrell, instrumentation with Witold Lutoslawski in Poland and musicology at the University of Gothenburg. In 1976 he received the City of Gothenburg Cultural Award. Gullbergs music has been published by Nordisk Musikförlaget, Carl Gehrmans musikförlag, Eriksförlaget and Mills Music inc., New York.

Today Olof Gullberg is one of, presumably, few Swedish composers adhering to twelve-tone technique, but his is a highly personal variant, influenced by and sometimes also combined with French impressionism (Debussy, Ravel etc.). Arnold Schönberg and, above all perhaps, Anton Webern and Luigi Dallapiccola were important ideals of his. Another part of the same picture is his need for concentration, avoiding protracted time flows and imparting meaning and substance to every note. If the nowadays rather hackneyed phrase can be resorted to, Olof Gullberg's music is a striking instance of "less is more".

Olof Höjer, Malmö 2006

Olof Höjer was born in 1937 and grew up in Stockholm, where he studied at the Richard Andersson School of Music, under pianist Herbert Westrell and, between 1958 and 1970, with Gottfrid Boon, himself a pupil of Schnabel's. He made his début at the Stockholm Concert Hall in 1967 and the following year in Berlin and Vienna, but it was an all-Debussy recital in 1970 that attracted serious attention to his piano playing. A distinct breakthrough then followed with the series of four recitals, presenting the whole of Debussy's piano output, which he gave in connection with "French Music Spring" in Stockholm in 1985.

His recording début came in 1973 with music by 20th century Swedish composers (Alfvén, Mankell, Hallnäs, Karkoff and Mellnäs). Among his recordings the complete piano works by Erik Satie and Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, have both received critical acclaim. It's not without pleasure that I now place my compositions in the hands of someone who knows the way I like to have my music interpreted.